Lee's lawyer blames Pag-IBIG for housing mess

by Dharel Placido, ABS-CBNnews.com

MANILA – The lawyer of Globe Asiatique (GA) president Delfin Lee on Thursday reiterated his client's position that the Home Mutual Development Fund (Pag-IBIG) should be blamed for the alleged "double sale" of properties from the developer.

Atty. Willie Rivera. Lee's legal counsel, said Pag-IBIG did not do its job of checking and verifying the identities of buyers whose loan applications were granted but later turned out to be "ghost" or fictitious borrowers.

Rivera said under GA-Pag-IBIG agreements, the property developer is also allowed to re-sell a property owned by delinquent buyer to a replacement buyer.

The right to replace defaulting buyers is included in the five-year buy back guarantee of GA inserted by Pag-IBIG in the contracts which it solely prepared, alternative to the right of GA to directly pay off the loan of the buyer/borrower or for Pag-IBIG to cause the automatic off-setting of the unpaid buyer’s loan with the retention, escrow and other receivables of GA which are still in the possession of Pag-IBIG, the court had explained.

The Makati Court had also rejected the defense of Pag-IBIG that GA is guilty of breach of warranties under the FCAs when the latter allegedly approved the Pag-IBIG loan applications of a substantial number of fictitious or ghost buyers.

Explained the court: "Defendants should not be allowed to escape liability with impunity by simply alleging that the defaulting buyers-borrowers are fictitious and spurious because in the first place, defendant HDMF was the one, based on admitted and undisputed evidence, its Charter and provisions of the said contracts, that approved all the Pag-IBIG Fund membership and loan applications of the buyer-borrowers which defendant HDMF now claims to be substantially composed of fictitious and spurious buyers-borrowers."

Lee: No double sale

Lee, currently detained at the Pampanga Provincial Jail following his arrest last week, is facing syndicated estafa charges for allegedly using ghost borrowers and fake documents to obtain P6.65 billion in Pag-IBIG loans.

The government complaint alleged that Lee made false representations, submitted falsified documents such as identification cards, income tax returns, tax identification numbers allegedly manufactured by GA as supporting documents for the loan applications, and paid for the immediate Pag-IBIG membership of these fictitious and fraudulent buyers for them to qualify for loans.

Pag-IBIG claimed that in order for GA to induce the mutual fund to release more funds to pay for the housing units supposedly acquired by these individuals, Lee paid the amortizations of the alleged non-existent borrowers so as not to alert Pag-IBIG.

In a brief interview while inside his cell last March 11, Lee insisted that no such "double sale" of properties occurred.